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Sunday, 1 July 2012

Death of Israel’s pro-Nazi Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir

Yizhak Shamir - Supporter of an Allliance with the Nazis

Article in Jerusalem weekly - Al Fajr

Zionism’s Dark Secret – Israel's Ruler Was a Supporter of an Alliance with Nazi Germany
Yitzhak Shamir was the hard-line ruler and successor to Menachem Begin as Prime Minister of Israel. He was Prime Minister from 1st October 1983 to the 13th September 1984, in an alliance with the Israeli Labour Party and from the 20th October 1986 to the 13th July 1992.

But contrary to the myths that have grown up in the bourgeois press Shamir, although hailing from Poland, was no anti-fascist. Quite the contrary. Zionist historian Walter Lacquer wrote that Shamir’s hostility to the British as the occupiers of Palestine, in his view the only obstacle to a Jewish state, meant that as ‘One of the central figures in Irgun’ he ‘believed that Britain not Germany was the main enemy. Consequently he refused to stop the fight against the mandatory power.' (A History of Zionism, p.376)

For Stern ‘there could be no radical distinction between German Nazis or the British because both were opposed to the total realisation of the Jewish state.’ C. Sykes, Crossroads to Israel, p. 243. But since the British not the Nazis were in power in Palestine ‘what followed, an attempt to reach an agreement with the Nazis, was therefore quite logical The ultra-patriotism(!) of the Stern Gang had manifested itself even earlier... in their attempts in 1941 to contact German emissaries in Beirut in order to establish a common anti-British front.' (Lacquer p. 556).

The historian who has written most comprehensively and in depth about the hidden history of Shamir and his pro-Nazi past is Lenni Brenner. In his books ‘Zionism in the Age of the Dictators’ and ‘The Iron Wall’ Brenner describe how:

Yitzhak Shamir (Yzernitzky) was born in Rozeny, Byelorussia, in 1915. He attended the Bialystock Hebrew Gymnasium and then the University of Warsaw law school. He arrived in Palestine in 1935, where he enrolled at the Hebrew University. However, he soon abandoned the law for the Irgun. With the 1936 Arab revolt he became an instructor in the “national cells”, a Revisionist youth movement, and was militarily involved in the Tel Aviv region. In 1938 Yzernitzky and a 15-year-old recruit, Eliyahu Bet Zouri, tried to blow up a WZO defence fund collection booth which levied a toll on Jewish travellers leaving Tel Aviv. They planted a crude gunpowder bomb which went off prematurely, severely burning Bet Zouri’s legs and scorching the face of Israel’s future Prime Minister. [6] But this bizarre incident was a mere nothing compared to his career as a leading figure in the “Stern Gang”.

The 18 points of Principles of LEHI

On the night of 31 August/1 September 1939 the entire command of the Irgun, including Stern, was arrested by the British CID. When he was released, in June 1940, Stern found an entirely new political constellation. Jabotinsky had called off all military operations against the British for the duration of the war. … by September 1940 the Irgun was hopelessly split: the majority of both the command and the ranks followed Stern out of the Revisionist movement….. Stern or "Yair", as he now called himself… began to define his full objectives. His 18 principles included a Jewish state with its borders as defined in Genesis 15:18 "from the brook of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates," a "population exchange", a euphemism for the expulsion of the Arabs and, finally, the building of a Third Temple of Jerusalem. [Geula Cohen, Woman of Violence, p.232] The Stern Group was at this time a bare majority of the military wing of Revisionism ….

The war and its implications were on everyone's mind and the Stern Gang began to explain their unique position in a series of underground radio broadcasts.

‘There is a difference between a persecutor and an enemy. Persecutors have risen against Israel in all generations and in all periods of our diaspora, starting with Haman and ending with Hitler ... The source of all our woes is our remaining in exile, and the absence of a homeland and statehood. Therefore, our enemy is the foreigner, the ruler of our land who blocks the return of the people to it. The enemy are the British who conquered the land with our help and who remain here by our leave, and who have betrayed us and placed our brethren in Europe in the hands of the persecutor.’ [Martin Sicker, Echoes of a Poet, American Zionist (February 1972), pp.32-3.]

Pro
Zionist article in Goebbels 'Der Angriff' describing journey and stay
in Palestine of the man who later headed the Jewish Separtment of the
SS, Baron von Mildenstein

Stern's single-minded belief, that the only solution to the Jewish catastrophe in Europe was the end of British domination of Palestine, had a logical conclusion. They could not defeat Britain with their own puny forces, … in September 1940 they drew up an agreement whereby Mussolini would recognise a Zionist state in return for Sternist co-ordination with the Italian Army when the country was to be invaded. [Izzy Cohen, Zionism and Anti-Semitism, (unpublished manuscript), p.3] …. Stern sent Naftali Lubentschik to Beirut, which was still controlled by Vichy, to negotiate directly with the Axis in January 1941 Lubentschik met two Germans - Rudolf Rosen and Otto von Hentig, the philo-Zionist, who was then head of the Oriental Department of the German Foreign Office. After the war a copy of the Stern proposal for an alliance between his movement and the Third Reich was discovered in the files of the German Embassy in Turkey. The Ankara document called itself a Proposal of the National Military Organisation (Irgun Zvai Leumi) Concerning the Solution of the Jewish Question in Europe and the Participation of the NMO in the War on the side of Germany. The Ankara document is dated 11 January 1941. ( see below)…:

"The NMO is closely related to the totalitarian movements of Europe in its ideology and structure." [Yehuda Bauer, From Diplomacy to Resistance, p.131.]

Lubentschik told von Hentig that if the Nazis were politically unwilling to immediately set up a Zionist state in Palestine, the Sternists would be willing to work temporarily along the lines of the Madagascar Plan… with France's defeat in 1940 the Germans revived the idea as part of their vision of a German empire in Africa. Stern and his movement had debated the Nazi Madagascar scheme and concluded that it should be supported, just as Herzl had initially backed the British offer, in 1903, of a temporary Jewish colony in the Kenya Highlands. [Kanaan, Germany and the Middle East, pp.165-6.]

There was no German follow-up on these incredible propositions, but the Sternists did not lose hope. In December 1941, after the British had taken Lebanon, Stern sent Nathan Yalin-Mor to try to contact the Nazis in neutral Turkey, but he was arrested en route. There were no further attempts to contact the Nazis.

The Stern plan was always unreal. One of the fundamentals of the German-Italian alliance was that the eastern Mediterranean littoral was to be included in the Italian sphere of influence. Furthermore, on 21 November 1941, Hitler met the Mufti and told him that although Germany could not then openly call for the independence of any of the Arab possessions of the British or French - out of a desire not to antagonise Vichy, which still ran North Africa - when the Germans overran the Caucasus, they would swiftly move down to Palestine and destroy the Zionist settlement.Stern was one of the Revisionists who felt that the Zionists, and the Jews, had betrayed Mussolini and not the reverse. Zionism had to show the Axis that they were serious, by coming into direct military conflict with Britain, so that the totalitarians could see a potential military advantage in allying themselves with Zionism. To win, Stern argued, they had to ally themselves with the Fascists and Nazis alike: one could not deal with a Petliura or a Mussolini and then draw back from a Hitler.

Did Yitzhak Yzertinsky - Rabbi Shamir - to use his underground nom de guerre, now the Foreign Minister of Israel, know of his movement's proposed confederation with Adolf Hitler? In recent years the wartime activities of the Stern Gang have been thoroughly researched by one of the youths who joined it in the post-war period, when it was no longer pro-Nazi. Baruch Nadel is absolutely certain that Yzertinsky-Shamir was fully aware of Stern's plan: "They all knew about it." [Author's interview with Baruch Nadel, 17 February 1981.]

Count Folk Bernadotte whom LEHI murdered - Bernadotte had played a major part in rescuing the Jews of Budapest

When Shamir was appointed Foreign Minister, international opinion focused on the fact that Begin had selected the organiser of two famous assassinations: the killing of Lord Moyne, the British Minister Resident for the Middle East, on 6 November 1944; and the slaying of Count Folke Bernadotte, the UN's special Mediator on Palestine, on 17 September 1948. Concern for his terrorist past was allowed to obscure the more grotesque notion that a would-be ally of Adolf Hitler could rise to the leadership of the Zionist state. When Begin appointed Shamir, and honoured Stern by having postage stamps issued which bore his portrait, he did it with the full knowledge of their past. There can be no better proof than this that the heritage of Zionist collusion with the Fascists and the Nazis, and the philosophies underlying it, carries through to contemporary Israel.

By September 1940 Stern, now to be known as Yair – the Illuminator – after Eleazer ben Yair, the commander of the Zealots at Masada during the Jewish revolt against Rome in AD70, left “the National Military Organization in the Land of Israel” to form his own “National Military Organization in Israel”.

By the late 1930s Stern concluded that the underground Irgun should not be tied to an above ground political movement that sought to work within the confines of Mandate legality…. According to his disciple Nathan Yalin-Mor, Stern was “not a socialist, but he vigorously objected to the anti-socialist rhetoric of the Revisionists”. [Nathan Yalin-Mor, Memories of Yair and Etzel, Jewish Spectator, Summer 1980, p.32.] That the Duce had turned towards Hitler did not disturb Stern. During the salad days of Italian patronage, the hard-core Revisionist fascists had become so committed to Mussolini that they invented a concatenated explanation for their hero’s betrayal.
….For years we have warned the Jews not to insult the fascist regime in Italy. Let us be frank before we accuse others of the recent anti-Jewish laws in Italy; why not first accuse our own radical groups who are responsible for what happened. [Paul Novick, Solutions for Palestine, (1939), p.18.]

…. Firmly convinced that the Axis were going to win the war, Stern contacted Italy’s local agent, an Irgunist. [Yehuda Bauer, From Diplomacy to Resistance, p.131 and interview with Baruch Nadel, 17 February 1981.] This man, however, worked simultaneously for the British CID, and Stern suspected that he was a double agent. [Bauer, p.132, and interview with Baruch Nadel, 17 February 1981] To be certain that they were in fact dealing with the Axis, the Sternists sent Naphtali Lubinczik to Vichy-controlled Beirut where, in January 1941, he met two Germans, Alfred Roser, a Military Intelligence agent, and Werner Otto von Hentig of the Foreign Office. On 11 January 1941 they sent the Sternists’ memorandum proposing collaboration to their embassy in Ankara, where it was found after the war. [Bauer, p.132.] As the document, entitled Fundamental Features of the Proposal of the National Military Organization In Palestine (Irgun Zvai Leumi) Concerning the Solution of the Jewish Question in Europe and the Participation of the NMO in the War on the Side of Germany, places Shamir in the starkest historic perspective, it is obligatory to cite it in full:

Stern Gang Collaboration Offer

It is often stated in the speeches and utterances of the leading statesmen of National Socialist Germany that a prerequisite of the New Order in Europe requires the radical solution of the Jewish question through evacuation (“Jew-free Europe”).

The evacuation of the Jewish masses from Europe is a precondition for solving the Jewish question; but this can only be made possible and complete through the settlement of these masses in the home of the Jewish people, Palestine, and through the establishment of a Jewish state in its historic boundaries.

The solving in this manner of the Jewish problem, thus bringing with it once and for all the liberation of the Jewish people, is the objective of the political activity and the years-long struggle of the Israeli freedom movement, the National Military Organization (Irgun Zvai Leumi) in Palestine.

The NMO, which is well-acquainted with the goodwill of the German Reich government and its authorities towards Zionist activity inside Germany and towards Zionist emigration plans, is of the opinion that:

Common interests could exist between the establishment of a new order in Europe in conformity with the German concept, and the true national aspirations of the Jewish people as they are embodied by the NMO. Cooperation between the new Germany and a renewed folkish-national Hebraium would be possible and, The establishment of the historic Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis, bound by a treaty with the German Reich, would be in the interest of a maintained and strengthened future German position of power in the Near East.

Proceeding from these considerations, the NMO in Palestine, under the condition the above-mentioned national aspirations of the Israeli freedom movement are recognized on the side of the German Reich, offers to actively take part in the war on Germany’s side.

This offer by the NMO, covering activity in the military, political and information fields, in Palestine and, according to our determined preparations, outside Palestine, would be connected to the military training and organizing of Jewish manpower in Europe, under the leadership and command of the NMO. These military units would take part in the fight to conquer Palestine, should such a front be decided upon.

The indirect participation of the Israeli freedom movement in the New Order in Europe, already in the preparatory stage, would be linked with a positive-radical solution of the European Jewish problem in conformity with the above-mentioned national aspirations of the Jewish people. This would extraordinarily strengthen the moral basis of the New Order in the eyes of all humanity.

The cooperation of the Israeli freedom movement would also be along the lines of one of the last speeches of the German Reich Chancellor, in which Herr Hitler emphasized that he would utilize every combination and coalition in order to isolate and defeat England.

The NMO, whose terrorist activities began as early as the autumn of the year 1936, became, after the publication of the British White Papers, especially prominent in the summer of 1939 through successful intensification of its terroristic activity and sabotage of English property. …

Two newspapers were published in Warsaw (The Deed and Liberated Jerusalem): these were organs of the NMO.

The office in Warsaw maintained close relations with the former Polish government and those military circles, who brought greatest sympathy and understanding towards the aims of the NMO. Thus, in the year 1939 selected groups of NMO members were sent from Palestine to Poland, where their military training was completed in barracks by Polish officers.

The negotiations, for the purpose of activating and concretizing their aid, took place between the NMO and the Polish government in Warsaw – the evidence of which can easily be found in the archives of the former Polish government – were terminated because of the beginning of the war.

The Germans told Lubinczik that Arab sensibilities would have to take priority, and Berlin showed no further interest in the treacherous Zionists. [16] This, however, did not deter the Sternists. The Vichyites having been defeated in Lebanon-Syria in July 1941.

What was Shamir’s attitude towards all of this? Nicholas Bethell interviewed him for his 1979 book, The Palestine Triangle. Shamir told him that he had been against making approaches to Italy. I didn’t think it would do any good. But Stern had good memories of his work in Poland before the war. He had got many Jews to Palestine by exploiting the anti-Semitism of Polish officials. He thought it might work in Italy. At least he felt he had to try. [Nicholas Bethell, The Palestine Triangle, p.126]

In October 1983, after he took office as Prime Minister, Shamir was interviewed by the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot. At least this time the Nazis came into the discussion:

There was a plan to turn to Italy for help and to make contact with Germany on the assumption that these could bring about a massive Jewish immigration. I opposed this, but I did join Lehi after the idea of contacts with the Axis countries was dropped. [Christopher Walker, Shamir Defends Terrorist Past, The Times (London), 21 October 1983, p.24]

Even if we were to take his new tale as gospel, was not the Prime Minister of Israel nevertheless confessing that he had knowingly joined a pro-Nazi organization? But he was lying. There is evidence that he had been an early follower of Stern. Gerold Frank, in his 1963 book The Deed, a study of the Sternists’ later assassination of Lord Moyne, wrote, three times, of a meeting, “in the days immediately following the Raziel-Stern split”, where Yzernitzky tried to recruit the still undecided youths of the Irgun to Stern’s faction: “‘Men!’ his deep voice rumbled. ‘If you want to smell fire and powder, come with us!’” [Gerold Frank, The Deed, pp.91-4, 124, 139] Additionally, Shamir conveniently “forgets” that there were two attempts to ally with the Hitlerites, and there is no doubt that Shamir was a prominent member of the organization before Yalin-Mor made his unsuccessful effort to teach the Germans again in Turkey.

Although today Shamir denies that he was even a member when the Sternists tried to link up with the arch-enemy of the Jews, few can be expected to believe the crude official lie. Therefore, we will be told, unofficially, of course, that while the proposal was crackpot – the notions that Hitler might have armed the Jews, or that the Jews would have fought on his side, rank among the most grotesque productions ever concocted by the human mind – nevertheless it was made before the slaughter of the Jews had commenced, and was made only in the hope of saving Jewish lives. As we have seen, however, Stern had been in Poland in the years immediately prior to the war, and had done nothing to mobilize Polish Jews against the anti-Semites there, and Nathan YalinMor and Israel Scheib (Eldad) had fled before the German Army to Lithuania, and then made no attempt to return to Poland to organize the underground resistance. The Sternists had always thought that anti- Semitism was justified and inevitable and could never be fought. They were firmly convinced that Nazism was the wave of the future. As Zionists, they believed that “’tis indeed an ill-wind that blows no one any good”, and they sought to put Nazism’s wind in their sails. They tried to justify their singular position in a series of illegal radio broadcasts:

There is a difference between a persecutor and an enemy. Persecutors have risen against Israel in all generations and in all periods of our diaspora, starting with Haman and ending with Hitler ... The source of all our woes is our remaining in exile, and the absence of a homeland and statehood. Therefore, our enemy is the foreigner, the ruler of our land who blocks the return of the people to it. The enemy are the British who conquered the land with our help and who remain here by our leave, and who betrayed us and placed our brethren in Europe in the hands of the persecutor. [Martin Sicker, Echoes of a Poet, American Zionist. February 1972, pp.32-3]

Shamir still approves of the Revisionists’ dealings with the Polish anti-Semites, and told Bethell that “It was a political agreement. They helped us for anti-Semitic reasons. We explained to them, ‘If you want to get rid of the Jews, you must help the Zionist movement.’” [Bethell, p.41] Shamir today pretends he was not fully involved in the Stern Gang’s pro-Nazi orientation, but we are fully entitled to conclude that his contemporary attitude towards collusion with the Colonels likewise reflects his thinking then, concerning collaboration with the Nazis.

Given Revisionism’s pre-war links with Mussolini, and the declared Fascism of many of its leaders as well as its ranks, we must likewise accept the Sternists at their word when they told the Nazis that they were totalitarians. It was his Fascist nationalism and his conviction that anti- Semitism was, likewise, a legitimate form of nationalism for gentiles, that led Yzernitzky to approve of the would-be pact with the Devil.

It was the 1 September 1942 escape of Yzernitsky and Giladi from the Mizra Detention Camp near Acre that marks the rebirth of the movement, now renamed Lohamei Herut Yisrael (Fighters for the Freedom of Israel) or Lehi. [Frank, p.124, and Nathan Yalin-Mor, The British Called Us The Stern Gang, Israel Magazine, February 1973, pp.78-9]

Yzernitzky was slowly re-establishing contact with the scattered survivors when he concluded that Giladi had become a menace to the security of the group. The latter had decided that they had to embark on a campaign of assassinating leaders of the WZO, including Ben-Gurion, and he threatened to purge those within their ranks who opposed his scheme. Yzernitzky, acting on his own, ordered him to be killed without an internal trial…

During the night of 31 October-i November 1943, Yalin-Mor and 19 other Sternists tunnelled their way out of Latrun and soon a triumvirate took charge of the FFI: Yalin-Mor and Scheib (Eldad) as their propagandists, and Yzernitzky as Operations Commander. Scheib (Eldad) was a right-wing mystic, capable of little more than rhetorical bombast, and it was Yalin-Mor who provided their distinctive political theorizing. The news of the Holocaust had made it psychologically impossible for them, as Jews, to continue as a Fascist , pro-Nazi tendency, but Yalin-Mor retained and developed Stern’s demagoguery. Now the FFI saw two more potential allies: the Soviets, who Yalin-Mor understood would revert to an anti-British posture after the war; and the Arabs. While still proclaiming their goal of a Zionist state from the Mediterranean to the Euphrates, they now insisted that they were part of a broader anti-imperialist front in the Middle East.

Their new line provided much of the public rationale behind their 6 November 1944 Cairo assassination of Walter Guinness, Lord Moyne, Churchill’s Minister Resident in the Middle East. The youthful assassinations were Eliyahu Hakim and Eliyahu Bet Zouri.

Moyne was Colonial Secretary when the unfortunate immigrant ship, the Struma, reached Istanbul, and he was the one who pressured the Turks into pushing it back out into the Black Sea ... He was the one who asked, when there was a chance of saving one million Jews from the Nazi Holocaust: “What will I do with them?” [Christopher Walker, Shamir Defends Terrorist Past, The Times (London), 21 October 1983, p.24]

However, as far back as 1940, Stern wrote to the Nazis to tell them of their military activities which, “according to our determined preparations”, would spread “outside Palestine”. When, in 1941, Yalin-Mor arrived in Palestine, Stern told him of his ambition to assassinate the Minister Resident in Egypt, as an illustration that their fight was not merely against the British presence in Palestine, but against the Empire as such. But when London appointed an Australian as the Resident, the plan had to be temporarily shelved, as the murder of an Australian would not be understood. The assignment of the former Colonial Secretary to the post, in 1944, revived the plan. [31]

In 1944, Zionism in Palestine was not of major interest for Egyptians who were still preoccupied with the British domination of their own country, and there was a natural sympathy for the two youths who had killed the representatives of the hated foreigners, and local illusions were only reinforced when Bet Zouri insisted that they were not Zionists. [32]

Although Moyne’s role in denying Palestine as a refuge to the Jews of Europe is Shamir’s pretext for the slaying, the assassination did nothing to help the still surviving Jews in Nazi-occupied territory, and it alienated much of the British public and governmental opinion from the Zionist cause.

Yalin-Mor’s propaganda had given the Sternists an anti-imperialist image, not merely to several hundred Jewish youths in Palestine, but also abroad. He told the world press that:

We are for a truly democratic, as well as free and independent Palestine. We are opposed to every kind of exploitation. We are not anti-socialist. We believe in a strong state encouraged by co-operative methods. The majority of the Jewish people in Palestine are workers – we believe they will govern the country well. [Constantine Poulos, War Chief Pledges Fight – “Wherever Union Jack Flies”, New York Post, 28 December 1945.]

The majority of the movement’s leaders were, however, still rightists who saw such rhetoric as a sly tactic. [Y.S. Brenner, The “Stern Gang” 1940-48, Middle Eastern Studies, October 1965, pp.7, 13] Such militarist currents are notorious for their lack of ideological clarity, their ranks really do not care what is said in their name, as long as they are allowed to play with their bombs.

In 1955, the Labour government recruited the erstwhile organizer of assassinations into the Mossad. Naturally his career in the Zionist secret police is shrouded in obscurity. Who’s Who in Israel – 1978, in conformity with its standard practice concerning such operatives, merely listed him as having joined the civil service in a “senior post”. [Shamir, Yitzhak, Who’s Who in Israel – 1978, p.330] He was reported to have been a top aide to the then head of the Mossad, Isser Harel, and to have organized several operations against German scientists in Egypt. [Nevo, and Arie Dayan, Shamir in 1949: Nathan Yalin-Mor on Yitzhak Shamir, Koteret Rashit, 7 September 198] We are allowed to conjecture as to whether he had some connection with the letter bombs they received. It has also been reported that he was head of the Mossad’s European bureaux when he retired in 1965. [hamir the Terrorist, Free Palestine, November 1983, p.3]

After his retirement, Shamir became a small businessman and then a manager of various concerns, in the late 1960s managing a small rubber factory in Kfar Sava. [Morris] He became active in the Soviet Jewry’ movement, joined the Herut Party in 1970, and was made head of its new immigrant department. But whatever Begin may have thought of him in those days, when he first ran for the Knesset, in December 1973, he was only number 27 on the Herut list. [Morris]

Although there was nothing to distinguish his work within the Knesset, once in the parliament, his rise was rapid and in 1975 he was elected party chairman. In 1977, after the Likud triumph, he became Speaker of the Knesset. Always the hard liner, he abstained in the September 1978 vote on the Camp David agreement, and in March 1979 he abstained on the Egyptian peace treaty. He believed that Sadat only wanted to regain Egyptian territory before reverting to a rejectionist stance. [Morris]

In March 1980 he succeeded Moshe Dayan as Foreign Minister, after Dayan concluded that Begin was simply deceiving Carter regarding implementing even the inadequate “autonomy” called for under the Camp David accord. The Massacre

As a member of the cabinet, Shamir bears full responsibility for every aspect of the invasion of Lebanon and the ensuing massacre, but he was singled out by the Kahan Commission for an individual dollop of blame:

‘In our view, the Foreign Minister erred in not taking any measures after the conversation with Minister Zippori in regard to what he had heard from Zippori about the Phalangist actions in the camps.’ [Excerpts of Report on Officials’ Responsibility in Beirut Killings, Times, 9 February 1983, p.18]

It will be recalled that the cabinet had heard, on 16 September, their own Chief of Staff’s statement that “I see it in their eyes ... what they are waiting for ... Amin has already spoken of revenge and all of them are sharpening their blades.” Here, again, we see how the Commissioners drew the minimalist conclusions from the plain evidence before them. Zippori had been alerted by Ze’ev Schiff, the military analyst for Ha’aretz, and it is reasonable to hypothesize that he either informed Shamir of his source, or the Foreign Minister asked him for his source. Additionally, Shamir may have personally disliked Zippori for his hesitations regarding the Chief of Staff’s policy, but Zippori was only confirming – the next day – the fears of that very Chief of Staff. Shamir disregarded, first, the Chief of Staff’s remark, and then Zippori’s accurate report, because, it seems – emotionally and consciously – he wanted a massacre. That is the only conclusion consonant with his entire career as one of Zionism’s pre-eminent murderers and fanatics.Shamir Comes to Power: the Silence is Deafening

Why was there no outcry from within the ranks of Zion at the accession to power of a man with a record like Shamir’s? Only a few months before, in February, two journalists writing in Ha’aretz, the country’s leading daily, had discussed the Stern Gang’s proposition to the Nazis, on the occasion of the then Foreign Minister’s denunciation of left Zionist Un Avneri for interviewing Arafat. But beyond a call by M.K. Virshuvski of the tiny Shinui Party for an investigation, no one paid much attention to the exposé.

When Shamir was nominated to succeed Begin, the Israeli Association of Anti-Fascist Fighters and Victims of Nazism sent telegrams to President Herzog and the cabinet, pleading with them not to allow Shamir to take office, basing their appeal on the recent evidence that Shamir was “one who made efforts to reach an alliance with the official representatives of Nazi Germany”. [Benny Morris, Shamir steps from the shadows into the world’s spotlight, Jerusalem Post, 18 September 1983, p.2] And Professor Yesheyahu Leibowitz, one of Israel’s most distinguished scholars and social critics, duly wrote a letter to Ha’aretz, demanding to know why there was indeed no such outcry at the fact that the country now had a would-be collaborator for its Prime Minister. The official opposition, the Alignment, was, however, silent.

Their silence was based on two considerations. Immediately, they had no real desire to take power in the wake of the collapse of the Israeli stock exchange, but there were also profound historical reasons for their lassitude. The Labour Zionists had been fully aware of the Stern Gang’s politics when they had allowed them into the Tnuat HaMeri, in 1945, and the Labour government knew Shamir’s personal history when they recruited him into their Mossad. They were familiar with Herut’s Fascist past when they took Begin into their cabinet in 1967. How could they, in 1983, suddenly pretend to be shocked by Shamir’s past? Additionally, they had linked themselves to so many criminals since the Holocaust – Nixon and Vorster immediately come to mind – that they had lost all interest in complaining about a mere would-be collaborator with Adolf Hitler.

Jabotinsky was quite correct in defining Zionism as a colonial and racist enterprise. He envisioned a triumphant Zionist state amidst a Middle East and a world dominated by imperialism, with the Palestinian population accepting their lot, as so many native peoples had been forced to do before them. He did not foresee our world, a world where most of the then colonial peoples have won their independence. He could never have anticipated a situation in which the Palestinians are the most educated element in the Arab world, and, inexorably, that will be the downfall of Zionist-Revisionism and its doctrine of the iron wall. For it is not in the nature of the modern educated mind to accept even the slightest inequality between nations. The Palestinians have endured many terrible ordeals, and further trials will be their fate, but they have the capacity for ideological growth, as do all oppressed forces, and they will, inevitably, develop the correct strategy for victory.

The antidote to the policy of the iron wall is a democratic secular movement for a democratic secular Palestine, an organizition uniting the Palestinian people with the progressive minority of Jews, a minority sure to grow as a result of the unending wars imposed on the Jewish population by the very nature of Zionism, and the economic crisis created by those same wars. To think otherwise, to believe in the permanency of the iron wall, is to hold that there will be an eternal exception to the drive toward a democratic secular world.

[LEHI was one of the three Jewish underground organizations in Palestine. It was formed following a split in ETZEL (the organization headed then by Begin). One of its leaders during the period described below is current Israeli Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir. Both ETZEL and LEHI were often referred to as fascist by the labor organized third underground, the Haganah. At one time Haganah members would capture members of ETZEL and LEHI and turn them over to the British.A Document on a Trite Subject

Much has already been written and said about the sad and shameful attempts of LEHI to establish contacts with Nazi Germany. I believe that the German side of the matter has not yet been publicized. Deep in the pile of documents that I collect compulsively there is one that presents these contacts from the Nazi perspective. An interesting document.

It has become of interest once again as a result of statements by Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir, one of the best known leaders of LEHI, concerning the Avneri-Peled-Arnon-Arafat meeting. And there is indeed no comparison, because I am not Begin and I don't consider every enemy a "Nazi".

And there is certainly no comparison because of the date. 1941. The Nurenberg laws are already in force. The yellow star has been forced upon the Jews of Poland, Holland, and if I am not mistaken also France. Burning synagogues are a daily occurrence. The murder of Jews is no longer a secret. And nevertheless LEHI establishes contacts with the Germans.

Here is the story as it was seen from the German side:

On January 21, 1941, a very interesting document was sent from Ankara in Turkey. It was sent by Franz von Papen, then Nazi Germany's ambassador to Turkey, to the Nazi Foreign Office in Berlin.

The document in question was classified as "secret", and its identifying number is E234151-8.

To this document Ambassador von Papen attached another document, also classified as "secret", which included an intelligence report from the Naval Attache, who resided in Istanbul. This intelligence report was written on January 11, 1941, and is stamped with the official seal of the Nazi embassy in Turkey, which asserts that it was received on January 18, 1941.

The intelligence report included three sections. Two of them are not of interest to us now. Section 3, on the other hand, is very interesting. And so writes a German officer to Ambassador von Papen:

"Dear Honorable Mr. Ambassador! Attached to this letter you will find the following:

3. A proposal of the National Military Organization in Palestine for a solution to the Jewish problem in Europe.

With my allegiance,I am yours, ( -- )"

(In order to prevent any mistake, it should be noted that despite the fact that throughout the letter the German intelligence officer refers to the National Military Organization [ETZEL's full name -- YA], and even transliterates the words "Irgun Tzva'i Le'umi" in German, he actually means LEHI, and not ETZEL. In its early days this group was called "The National Military Organization in the Land of Israel", and the name LEHI was born later).

And when we arrive at the detailed report on section 3, we read as follows:

"Guidelines for the proposal of the National Military Organization in Palestine, concerning the solution of the Jewish question in Europe, AND THE ACTIVE PARTICIPATION OF THE NATIONAL MILITARY ORGANIZATION IN THE WAR ON THE SIDE OF GERMANY (My emphasis, B.M.).... The National Military Organization, being aware of the positive approach of the Reich's government to Zionist activity inside Germany, and to the Zionist emigration plans, believes that:

"1. A common interest is possible between the establishment of a new order in Europe according to the German conception, and the national aspirations of the Jewish people, as expressed by the National Military Organization.

"2. Cooperation is possible in the future between the New Germany and a New Hebrew National Entity. (In German -- Voelkisch-Nationalen)

"3. The establishment of the historical Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis, which will maintain contacts with the German Reich, is a German interest, for strengthening and protecting the German power posts which will be established in the near future in the Near East.

"Based on these points, and under the condition that the government of the German Reich recognize the national claims mentioned above, the National Military Organization offers to take an active part in the war on the side of Germany.

" ...

"Cooperation with the Israeli liberation movement is also in accordance with one of the latest speeches of the Reichskantsler[sp?], in which Mr. Hitler emphasized that he will use any combination and any coalition in order to isolate the British and beat them..."Later in the document its author describes historical landmarks on the path of this National Military Organization, tells of its start in the Revisionist Zionist movement, its ties with "Herr Z. Jabotinsky", and the split that was caused by "the pro-English stance of the Revisionist movement in Palestine" (and from this it is clear that it is LEHI that is being referred to and not ETZEL).

Into this historical summary enter a few enlightening statements that demonstrate a surprising familiarity with the affairs of the Jewish settlement in Palestine, and with some interesting traits of that "organization". For example:

"As opposed to other Zionist movements, the National Military Organization does not accept the notion that the homeland can only be taken over by slow and clandestine colonization. The Organization believes that `war and sacrifice' are the only instruments for the occupation and liberation of Palestine"...

Or,

"The National Military Organization is ideologically and structurally very close to the totalitarian movements in Europe"...

'The main group was the National Military Organization (the Irgun), which began to direct its operations against the British administration in Palestine after the publication of the white paper in 1939. Later that year, when the Irgun called off its campaign against the British, a split took place. the more militant wing, led by Avraham Stern, seceded from the Irgun to form Lohamei Heurt Yisrael (Fighters for the Freedom of Israel), better known as Lehi, after its Hebrew acronym, or the Stern Gang. The Stern Gang was so hostile to the British that it sought contact with the Axis powers in order to drive the British out of Palestine' - from Avi Shlaim - 'The IronWall: Israel and the Arab World' (Penguin, 2000), p24

'At the same time that the mufti was asking for the Nazis' help, Avraham Stern, the Lechi commander, suggested establishing a Jewish alliance with Nazi Germany to end British rule in Palestine. He was guided by the same principle: my enemy's enemy is my friend' [this passage then has a footnote citing Yosef Heller's 'Leh'i: 1940-1949' in Hebrew, vol II, p. 530] – from Tom Segev - 'One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate', (Abacus, 2000), p464n

'In the second half of 1940, a few members of the Irgun Zvai Leumi (National Military Organization)--the anti-British terrorist group sponsored by the Revisionists and known by its acronym Etzel, and to the British simply as the Irgun--made contact with representatives of Fascist Italy, offering to cooperate against the British. Soon the Etzel split, and the group headed by Avraham "Yair" Stern formed itself into the Lehi (from the initials of its Hebrew name, Lohamei Herut Yisrael--Fighters for the Freedom of Israel), also known as the Stern Gang. A representative of this group met with a German foreign ministry official and offered to help Nazi Germany in its war against the British. The Germans understood that the group aimed to establish an independent state based on the totalitarian principles of the Fascist and Nazi regimes. Many years after he tried to forge this lik with Nazis, a former Lehi leader explained what had guided his men at the time: 'Our obligation was to fight the enemy. We were justified in taking aid from the Nazi oppressor, who was in this case the enemy of our enemy--the British.' " - from Tom Segev - 'The Seventh Million: Israelis and the Holocaust' (Hill and Wang, 1993), p. 33

Abraham Stern - One of 3 leaders of the LEHI (Stern Gang) terrorist group

'A section of the Irgun headed by Avraham Stern, known as Lehi or the Stern Gang, made an offer to Hitler to assist in the conquest of Palestine in exchange for the transfer of the Jews of Europe. Alarmed by this proposal, Stern's envoy, Naphtali Lubentchik, was arrested by the authorities in Acre on his return from Beirut, and a year later Stern was tracked down by the British police, aided by bothe the Haganan and the Irgun, and shot'. - from Dan Cohn-Sherbok & Dawoud El-Alami - 'The Palestine-Israeli Conflict' (Oneworld, 2001), p39 (note that this comes from the Zionist half of this book written by Cohn-Sherbok)

'In opposition to the Haganah, the Irgun believed that it must continue to fight the British in Palestine, and try to seize power. Avraham Stern, who had formed a breakaway 'Irgun in Israel' movement (also known as the Stern Gang) , tried to make contact with Fascist Italy in the hope that, if Mussolini were to conquer the Middle East, he would allow a Jewish State to be set up in Palestine. When Mussolini's troops were deeated in North Africa, Stern tried to make contact with Nazi Germany, hoping to sign a pact with Hitler which would lead to a Jewish State once Hitler had defeated Britain. After two members of Stern's group had killed the Tel Aviv police chief and two of his officers, Stern himself was caught and killed. His followers continued on their path of terror.' - from Martin Gilbert - 'Israel: A History' (Doubleday/Black Swan, 1998/9), p. 111-112

British Wanted Poster for the Triumvirate Leading LEHI

'Avraham Stern, code-named Ya'ir - was a leading underground fighter in Palestine and founder of the Lohamei Herut Israel, (Stern Group). In 1939 he was imprisoned with other members of Lehi command until June 1940. He doubted that the Allies would win the war and tried to contact the Germans, to persuade them to adopt a pro-Jewish policy in Palestine. He was captured by the British mandate authorities in Palestine and executed. ' - Simon Wiesenthal Centre on Stern.

27 comments:

This is an amazing documentation of Yitzhak Shamir's past and his links with Fascism and the Nazis. Yet he is hailed by Netanyahu as a great Israeli patriot. It is time this material is revealed and publicised in the Jewish and national media, and that the record is set straight of the origins and practices of colonial Zionism. Instead of continually referring to the Mufti Al Hussaini's approach to Hitler for support as evidence of Arab anti-semitism, the Israel lobby should educate itself and its supporters with the real facts and past of many of its leaders, their terrorist practices, much of which is echoed in the behaviour of its current leaders, with their assassination policies, the brutal repression and tactics against peaceful demonstrators, and the land grabbing policies under occupation, the blatant disregard for international law and human rights -all denying the lessons of the Holocaust as 'never again' to any oppressed people.

It's no wonder that Anonymous choses to hide behind anonymity. If I couldn't read I'd try and disguise it!

There are 2 references to the Mufti, try using the search mechanism. E.g. 'At the same time that the mufti was asking for the Nazis' help, Avraham Stern, the Lechi commander, suggested establishing a Jewish alliance with Nazi Germany to end British rule in Palestine. He was guided by the same principle: my enemy's enemy is my friend'

The point I was making was that independence leaders often did say the enemy of my colonial occupier is my friend. But for a Zionist leader to embrace Hitler was a different matter.

Presumably Anonymous is keen to preserve his identity and who can blame him!

the Mufti was a minor war criminal so there would have been no need to mention him at all except to assuage the more idiotic posters!

Tony, you don't condemn Arabs who took away "Palestine" (Country of Israel) from our ancestors. Don't condemn the Arab thugs killing Jews in 1920, 1021, 1929, 1936-39. You don't condemn Englishmen who tolerated these murderers; which UNDERTOOK to create the Jewish national center in Palestine (instead of one more British colony :)), and meanly was broken by the obligations. You don't condemn the Aryan countries of Europe and America which amicably almost didn't start up to itself the Jewish refugees from Hitler. You don't condemn the same Anglo-Saxons and Russian who persistently refused to rescue Jews during the Holocaust (for example, to bomb roads to concentration camps, camp gas chambers and crematoriums. Or to warn the Hungarian, French and other Jews about death camps.)But you condemn Jews who fought against it! It is not a shame to you ;(

Apparently I 'don't condemn Arabs who took away "Palestine" (Country of Israel) from our ancestors.'

Err no. I don't, since it never happened. Most Jews at the time of Herod had already left, as the soil could not support them. They were to be found in large numbers in the Hellenised cities of the Middle East like Alexandria. Most of those who remained converted to Christianity and then Islam, or at least the poor Jewish farmers did.

So you're right, I don't condemn them. As Shlomo Sands pointed out, biologically the Palestinians are the true descendants of the ancient Hebrews, not the European settlers who were part of the Zionist movement.

Strange that all these dates post-date the Zionist colonisation of Palestine and in particular the Balfour Declaration of 1917. methinks it's no coincidence. The reaction of the local Arabs was often blind fury at what was happening to them. Same happened in India and other British colonies, though I notice that Anonymous conflates 1936-9, the great Arab rebellion, which was primarily directed at the British with the dates he had chosen.

I also note that the bomb attacks by the Irgun on Haifa market in 1938 and the subsequent killings of Arab civilians by both them and the Histadrut don't get a mention either.

But for the record the 1929 attacks which killed about 70 Jews had no justification. They were unfortunately a savage medieval reaction to the activities of the Zionists. Unfortunately the Jews attacked were the old religiou and anti-Zionist Jews of Jerusalem, Safed, Hebron and Tiberias. They were also an own goal but the Zionist movement which was the cause of it bears the major responsibility.

Apparently I 'don't condemn Englishmen who tolerated these murderers'. I condemn the British Empire for promising to give away a land which was not theirs to give away to a settler colonial movement called Zionism. It is irrelevant that British imperialism 'UNDERTOOK to create the Jewish national center in Palestine'. It had no right to give such an undertaking.

Of course Palestine was another British colony - just as Canada, Australia and South Africa were and where the British faced innumerable settler rebellions e.g. the Boer Wars.

Apparently I 'don't condemn the Aryan countries of Europe and America which amicably almost didn't start up to itself the Jewish refugees from Hitler.'

Wading through the gibberish I think anon means that Jews in Europe were the victims of anti-Semitism and the West in particular the USA didn't accept Jewish refugees from Hitler.

Well I certainly do condemn the USA for its behaviour towards the Jewish refugees. Pity that the leaders of US Zionism, Nahum Goldmann and Stephen Wise not only refused to oppose the State Department under the anti-Semitic Under Secretary Breckenbridge Long, but actually supported such restrictions.

Zionism internationally OPPOSED the emigration of Jewish refugees to anywhere but Palestine and since Palestine couldn't have taken more than a few they effectively preferred they die where they were than see another country rescue them. Don't take my word for it. Read something for once in your life like Shabtai Zvi's 'post Ugandan Zionism on Trial'.

Or the anti-Zionist US historian Lenni Brenner's 'Zionism in the Age of the Dictators' or better still Ben Hecht's 'Perfidy'. Hecht was a revisionist Zionist. Zvi interviewed Ben Gurion and Moshe Sharrett but Golda Meir refused to see him to answer the question as to why the Zionist movement did nothing in Palestine during the war. Ben Gurion in particular preferred to do nothing.

E.g. at the Zionist Executive Committee of 15.10.42, when the Zionist Organisation was still suppressing news of the holocaust as revealed by the Riegner telegram from Switzerland (only released after 3 months on 21.11.42) Ben Gurion outlined Zionist’s most immediate tasks: i. Opposition to the British government White Paper ii. Establishment of a Jewish army iii. Establishment of Palestine as a Jewish Commonwealth after the war. Not a word was mentioned about the holocaust.

Or Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver, President of the Zionist Organisation of America, who in 1946 said, at the 49th convention of the ZOA that 'I am happy that our movement has finally veered around to the point where we are all, or nearly all, talking about a Jewish state.. But I ask... are we again, in moments of desperation going to confuse Zionism with refugeeism which is likely to defeat Zionism... Zionism is not a refugee movement. It is not a product of the Second World War, nor of the first. Were there no displaced Jews in Europe... Zionism would still be an imperative necessity.”

'Refugeeism' was a dismissive reference to those who placed saving Jews first above building the Jewish state.

You say I don't condemn those who refused to rescue Jews during the holocaust but I'd be interested to know if you condemn the Zionist movement for obstructing the rescue of Jews and in the case of the leader of Hungarian Kastner, collaborating with Eichmann in order to save an elite at the expense of half a million Jews.

As for Russia, it saved between 3/4 and 1.5 million Jews, unlike the pathetic efforts of the Zionist state in the making.

I think our anonymous ignoramus means the railway lines. Actually it was Ben Gurion who was opposed to their bombing and the rest of the Zionist movement was lukewarm and only went through the motions of making such a call. Not once did the Zionists call a public demonstration or organise a campaign to demand their bombing.

Instead the Zionists in America opposed even Roosevelt's belated decision to set up a War Refugee Board in 1944, which nonetheless managed to save about 400,000 Jews.

Those who refused to 'warn the Hungarian Jews about the death camps' were as I said Kasztner and his so-called 'Rescue Committee' in Budapest. But it was worse because Kasztner and his cohorts actually encouraged ordinary Jews to board the deportation trains and they actively suppressd the Auschwitz Protocols, written by the Jewish escapees from Auschwitz Rudolph Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, which did indeed demonstrate that Auschwitz was an extermination camp.

Even worse, the Jewish Agency after the war paid the expenses of Kasztner to go and testify at the Nuremburg trials in order to EXONERATE Nazi war criminals like Kurt Becher and Herman Krumey (Eichmann's deputy in Hungary). He even tried to save Dieter Wisliceny from being hanged by the Czechs - Wislicency was instrumental in the destruction of Slovakian Jewry - the first Jewish community to be destroyed in Auschwitz and Maidenek.

So I certainly don't condemn Jews who fought against the Nazis, but they weren't the Zionists - they were the anti-Zionist Bund and dissident Zionists who had broken with Zionism.

1. "Most Jews at the time of Herod had already left, as the soil could not support them. They were to be found in large numbers in the Hellenised cities of the Middle East like Alexandria."--------But there were some more millions in the Country of Israel. And even before the Arab capture of the Country in a VII century Jews made about a quarter of her inhabitants, by estimates of the Israelian historian Gedaliya Allon. Arabs played a role in replacement of Jews from the Country, an in deprivation of the Jewish lands as the Israelian professor Bentsion Dinur found: http://zionismontheweb.org/Palestinian_Israel_Conflict/?tag=benzion-dinur And when former owners returned, Arabs began to kill them to prevent Jews to RETURN the country.

2. "Most of those who remained converted to Christianity and then Islam, or at least the poor Jewish farmers did."--------- You have any PROOFS of it, or you simply like to think so?

3. "As Shlomo Sands pointed out, biologically the Palestinians are the true descendants of the ancient Hebrews"----------Shlomo Zand - the known liar. Its book is called "Who and as invented the Jewish people" though these people exist about 30 centuries :)

4. "...not the European settlers who were part of the Zionist movement."---------These settlers - descendants of ancient Jews. Semitic (though with evuropean impurity) the origin of Jews, even Ashkenazi, is visible on their appearance :)

5. "I notice that Anonymous conflates 1936-9, the great Arab rebellion, which was primarily directed at the British with the dates he had chosen."--------This revolt was directed first of all against Jews, with constant PREMEDITATED murders of the Jewish CIVILIAN population. It was already at all "blind rage", but COOL, prudent crimes. It is interesting, why you don't condemn these murderers?

6. "I also note that the bomb attacks by the Irgun on Haifa market in 1938 and the subsequent killings of Arab civilians by both them and the Histadrut don't get a mention either."------------You "forgot" that Irgun's anti-Arab acts of terrorism were ONLY the ANSWER to murders by Arabs of the Jewish peace citizens, including women and children ;((( you also forgot that these acts of terrorism began only in 1937, and extended only in 1938, in 1-2 years after the beginning of Arab "revolt". Jews were very patient (official Zionist policy of restraint in reply to the ARAB terror, "havlagah"), but then the patience of some of them ended.

7. "Well I certainly do condemn the USA for its behaviour towards the Jewish refugees."---------If you condemn it why you don't abuse in the blog of the Aryan anti-Semites, refusing to let in the countries of Jewish refugees, BUT abuse Zionists who had no states and even the earth, and almost COULD make nothing?!

8. "Pity that the leaders of US Zionism, Nahum Goldmann and Stephen Wise not only refused to oppose the State Department under the anti-Semitic Under Secretary Breckenbridge Long, but actually supported such restrictions."-------- Than SPECIFICALLY they "supported such restrictions"?! From what source you took this strange statement? If Aryan US authorities, Canada, Australia, England wanted to let in to themselves the Jewish refugees, they would make it irrespective of Zionists. But they DID NOT WANT: http://www.cdn-friends-icej.ca/antiholo/evian/chapter3.html

9. "Apparently I don't condemn those who refused 'to bomb roads to concentration camps, camp gas chambers and crematoriums.'"----------Why you don't condemn them? The "Alliance" officially waged war not only against nazi Germany, but also for rescue of its victims. But they constantly refused to rescue REALLY these victims :((

10. "anonymous ignoramus means the railway lines. Actually it was Ben Gurion who was opposed to their bombing"----------Where you read it?

I won't waste my time with someone who doesn't even have the integrity to give their name, yet calls Shlomo Sand a 'liar' - actually a trained historian whose book was in the best seller lists in Israel for 19 weeks and whose thesis, about the Palestinians being the direct descendants of the Hebrews was something both Ben Gurion and Yitzhak ben Zvi (1st PM and 2nd President of Israel), agreed with.

My concern is not primarily with the atrocious record of the British and US Governments. That is taken for granted. It is the quisling Zionist movement which gave full backing to those governments and also gave them cover. It even condemned those Jews who did try to break the silence and do something.

I suggest you read Lenni Brenner's 51 Documents in which Stephen Wise, the acknowledged head of the US Zionist movement and President of the AJC described Peter Bergson of the Emergency Committee to Save Jews (a dissident revionist Zionist) as 'worse than Hitler.' These are in the State Dept. records.

Wise, Goldman et al did their best to prevent anything being done, opposed the setting up of the War Refugee Board until the US Secretary to the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, exposed the lies and deceptions of the State Department Zionists and anti-Semites, in particular Breckenbridge Long, who had consistently downplayed the holocaust and the no. of Jewish refugees who had come to the US.

Even though formed very late, January 44, the WRB was responsible for saving maybe 400,000 Jews.

All your screeching and screaming indicate is that you know next to nothing about what happened.

As for Ben Gurion, Chairman of the Jewish Agency, his role was particularly disgusting and even Zionist historians don't mince word (as opposed to gullible hasbarists).

Shabtai Teveth, who was Ben Gurion's official biographer and some would say hagiographer, cannot ignore Ben Gurion's prioritisation of building the State as opposed to taking any steps to rescue Jews. A meeting of the Mapai Central Committee was more important than taking time out to see how aid could concretely be given to get Jews out of Nazi occupied Europe. This is what Teveth says in The Burning Ground 1886-1948, Boston 1987:

He [BG] maintained a puzzling silence about what was taking place in Europe and Riegner's telegram'. p. 842 But it wasn't so puzzling. 1942 was the year of Biltmore when demands were explicitly made for a Jewish state. Zionist leaders were quite clear that their main task was statehood not saving Jews.

But what was so shocking was they actually obstructed the rescue efforts of others because they saw them as a danger to establishing a state. Ben Gurion was absolutely explicit about this in his 1938 Memo to the Zionist Executive which talks about the dangers of 'refugeeism' taking priority over Zionism.

Even in terms of Zionist meetings the holocaust received no priority, indeed at the Jewish Agency Executive meetings [the proto-Israeli state govt.] no mention was made of the holocaust nor was it discussed on November 1, 8 or 15 1942] . p.844 By November 22 with the arrival of 69 Exchange Jews from Belsen, there was definite confirmation of Riegner's telegram of the previous September confirming the holocaust (the Jewish Agency had suppressed news of this for three months) when maybe ½ million more Jews had been murdered. When Eliayahu Dobkin of the JA told one woman from Radom he didn't believe her stories he was slapped in the face for his pains. This was the Zionist attitude.

And did Ben Gurion attend the JA meeting of 22 November when all this was discussed? no, he had a 'light cold'. On p.848 of Teveth we read that:

'In spite of the certainty that genocide was being carried out, the JAE did not deviate appreciably from its routine and Ben Gurion the chairman, left all its rescue efforts completely in the hands of Gruenbaum, Sharett and Kaplan, not even taking part in the Rescue Committee. Two facts can be definitely stated: Ben-Gurion did not put the rescue effort above Zionist politics and he did not regard it as a principal task demanding his personal leadership; he never saw fit to explain why, then or later. Instead he devoted his effort to rallying the Yishuv and Zionism around the Biltmore Program and to the preparations for its implementation.

And ‘For nearly 2 years… Ben-Gurion was more concerned for the fate of the Yishuv than for that of European Jewry. Ben-Gurion repeatedly stresed that the importance of the Yishuv went far beyond the individual Jews of Palestine.’ Why? Because ‘the Yishuv was a “great and invaluable security, a security for the hope of the Jewish people.’ [849]

In other words the achievement of this bastard racial state which would perpetuate the mythical Jewish nation was more important than individual Jews themselves. The holocaust was seen as a means of levering into being the Jewish state. No matter that millions of Jews would have died by then. ‘“distress” could also serve as “political leverage” [850]. He [Ben-Gurion] told the JAE, “The harsher the affliction, the greater the strength of Zionism.”

What other conclusion can be draw than Teveth’s following statement?

‘If there was a line in Ben-Gurion’s mind between the beneficial disaster and an all-destroying catastrophe, it must have been a very fine one.’ [851]

You ask where did I read that Ben Gurion was opposed to the bombing. Here:

Richard H. Levy states: ‘The JAE in Jerusalem was opposed, and even suppressed an appeal for the bombing of Auschwitz.(24) Gruenbaum reported on June 7 that when he met with Pinkerton on June 2 he asked the latter to transmit to Washington an appeal to bomb "the death camps in Poland." Foreshadowing Kubowitzkis arguments, Pinkerton asked "Will this not cause the deaths of many Jews? And will not German propaganda claim that the Americans are participating in the extermination of the Jews?" He then declined to transmit the request unless it was made in writing.

24. Gruenbaum's Memorandum of June 7, Central Zionist Archives S 26/1232; Minutes of the Meeting of the JAE, June 11, CZA. Gruenbaums letter of June 21 to Barlas, CZA S 26/1284. Gruenbaum's correspondence, but not the minutes of the meeting of the Executive, were noted by Yehuda Bauer, American Jewry and the Holocaust (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1981), p. 496, note 31.

The meeting of “the nation’s leaders” referred to by Gruenbaum took place on June 11, 1944. It was a meeting of the Jewish Agency Executive in Jerusalem. Gruenbaum reported on his talk with the U.S. consul-general in Jerusalem, J.C. Pinkerton. …

To the Jewish Agency Executive Gruenbaum said: “According to the reports we have, thousands of Jews are being murdered every day in the death camps. … Even if we supposed that these camps will be bombed while Jews are in them, and some of them are killed, the others will be able to scatter and will be saved. If the buildings are destroyed, they will not be able to commit murder for months using their technique.”

The discussion was short and lively. Five of the eight Executive members at the meeting took part. All of them rejected the proposal outright. One of them, Dr. Shmorak, took issue with Gruenbaum’s information regarding the small population at Auschwitz. Two others, Dr. Joseph (Dov Yosef) and Dr. Senator, were openly outraged that Gruenbaum had made this suggestion to the consul-general. The chairman, David Ben-Gurion, summed up: “The opinion of the Executive is that no proposals should be made to the Allies to bomb places where Jews are located.”

Beit Zvi writes that: ‘Clearly, then, it was not a case of the momentary absence of a majority in favor of bombing. There was general agreement against Gruenbaum’s view and a clearcut decision of principle against making such proposals to the Allies. And what happened “after a time”? Did the Jewish Agency Executive change its mind, and if so, what was its new stance? In fact, the request to bomb Auschwitz was not made “after a time,” as Gruenbaum would have it, but at the very same time and perhaps even before the Executive’s negative decision. The documents relating to this episode99 indicate that the request was made by Weizmann, who was then in London, concurrently with the rejection of Gruenbaum’s proposal by the Jewish Agency Executive. But Weizmann’s proposal was made without authority and wasn’t followed up. It was another plea made for the record. Never was there a campaign, in the press or elsewhere, still less a demonstration. Zionists then seemed remarkably lethargic about demonstrating in favour of action to be taken and as in Washington, when hundreds of Rabbis held a demonstration to the White House, were actually opposed to so doing.

You can also read much the same in for example Tom Segev’s ‘7th Million’. ‘Although I was then chairman of the Jewish Agency executive, the enlistment of the Jewish people in the demand for a Jewish state was at the center of my activity.’ [98] ‘the disaster facing European Jewry is not directly my business.’

‘purely philanthropic rescue, such as the rescue of German Jewry,… can only cause damage from a Zionist perspective…’ [100] ‘The leaders of the Jewish Agency generally agreed with the principle that the few that could be saved should be selected in accordance with the needs of the Zionist enterprise in Palestine.’ The apotheosis of this was the Kasztner episode when the Zionists train of 1684 was paid for by silence and complicity over the deportation of ½ million Hungarian Jews. Little wonder that members of the Jewish Agency grew queasy at how they would be seen after the war. ‘We are full of sin’ summed up one of them and another predicted that after the war the Jewish Agency would find itself in the dock. ‘Shame on us’ said Golda Meir.’ [103]

This was not just the conclusion of one or 2 historians but most who are not utterly slavish to the Zionist cause.

And there was Rudolph Vrba whose Auschwitz Protocols likewise led to the saving of Budapest Jewry? Someone the Zionists attacked for not being a Zionist unsurprisingly.You should face the fact that the Zionist movement was a movement of collaboration which wrote off, even denied, the holocaust when it took place and mercilessly exploited it after the war. And they used the reparations of the German state to help build the Israeli state whilst keeping the holocaust survivors (for whom the reparations were meant) in penury.

Tony, on your fairy tales "as Zionists prevented noble Aryans to rescue Jews from the Holocaust" I will answer a bit later. While esteem research of the professor Bentzion Dinur about "aboriginal" ;) Arab inhabitants of Palestine: It is useful for you.Fragments: http://zionismontheweb.org/Palestinian_Israel_Conflict/?tag=benzion-dinur "...a. Inward Arab Settlement of Palestine pre 1918

Inward migratory settlement came from both Ottoman (Turkish) and Egyptian sources:

i. Ottoman Grant of Asylum to Muslim Refugees

The Ottomans granted asylum to Moslem refugees fleeing from their homelands for political and religious reasons: » After the French conquest of Algeria in 1830, many Algerians settled in Lower and Upper Galilee. This region also attracted other immigrant Moslem Arabs from Damascus, and Kurds from Syria; » In 1878, the Ottomans permitted Circassian refugees fleeing from Christian-Russian rule in the Caucasus to settle in cis- and trans-Jordan; » Turkoman tribes from the mountains of Iraq were allowed ultimately to settle on the slopes of Mount Carmel; » In 1908, Arabs from Yemen settled in Jaffa.

ii. Egyptian Émigrés

One of the most important Arab migrations into Palestine came from Egypt during the early and min-nineteenth century. » Egyptian Army Conscription » Muhammad Ali, (aka Mehemet Ali) the Ottoman viceroy of Egypt between 1805-1849, instituted a number of administrative reforms within his territory. Most significantly he established a standing army by means of conscription in 1829. As a consequence, many Egyptian peasants fled to Palestine to avoid such service. This was to be of little avail, because Ali’s son, Ibrahim Pasha, invaded and occupied Palestine between 1831-1841 and they again came under his control. During this period he ‘imported’ more Egyptian labourers into Palestine in addition to those who were already there..."

...To the extent that land in the coastal and other plains was capable of being cultivated, wild marauding Bedouin tribes present in these areas discouraged any permanent rural settlement or agricultural development. Consequently the lower flat lying areas were more or less desolate and unproductive. In addition: » the Northern and central coastal plains were swamp-like and malaria-ridden as was the land around the Hula lake and the Lake of Galilee; » the Southern coastal plains were inundated with sand dunes; » Consequently, Arab urban and rural settlements tended to avoid the coastal plains and were to be found mainly in the hill country west of the Jordan River in Judea and Samaria and parts of the Galilee...

Arabs/Muslims consider that has the right to grasp any another's earth at "incorrect" ;) But you recognize "rights" of Arabs on grasped by their ancestors without any rights of the earth, and don't recognize the right of Jews to the RETURNED earth of our ancestors. It is double injustice; - ((

I also advise to you to esteem, as Muslims, since the first century of Islam and almost up to now, treated Jews living under their power, "dhimmi". OFFICIAL systematic humiliations (!!), heavy discrimination, frequent violent addresses to Islam. Only the European colonization softened or stopped this outrage. How modern Muslims have the nerve to complain of discrimination of Arabs in Israel?

http://zionismontheweb.org/Palestinian_Israel_Conflict/?tag=benzion-dinur ...become the State of Israel in 1948.” (Behat pp 64-65)

One must also bear in mind that Zionism is not a modern phenomenon imitating other nationalistic movements prevalent in the 19th century. While a spiritual longing to return to Zion has long existed ever since Jewish expulsion by the Romans in the first century, there has been a constant physical Jewish aliya -“going up” – or return to Israel driven by the age old messianic dream of medieval times which started well before the early Zionist aliyot (plural of aliya) in the 1880’s. The relationship between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel is a basic element in Jewish consciousness. For some historians, notably Benzion Dinur, Israel’s Minister of Education from 1951-1955, the driving force behind the aliyot of the medieval and early modern periods was the “Messianic ferment” that cropped up in Jewish communities which...

The danger is in rewriting history through today's spectacles. Most Jews in Palestine became Christians. there was no longing to preserve a Jewish political tradition and most Jews, religious and anti-Zionist, came to study and die in Palestine, particularly Jerusalem without any thought of colonising the country.

You talk of 'Jewish consciousness' as if it's a fact. But whenever they had a chance Jews went anywhere but Palestine, as in the great migration from Russia from 1850-1914 when just 2% of 2.5 million went there. This idea of the relationship between a 'people' and land is reminiscent of blut and boden, blood and soil, the basics of Nazi racial ideology and it is as superficial and wrong now as then.

Messianism certainly did crop up. There were many false Messiahs but it took British imperialism to redeem them! You get your facts wrong when talking of the myth of the Roman expulsion in the first century. There was no expulsion, that was not the Roman way. There was a continual emigration caused by the inability of the land to support the people, but that's a different matter. There's no historical evidence for it and most Jewish historians decry it. The presence of Jews in Palestine, of which little is known anyway for most of the time between the 1st century and Ottoman times, signified nothing except Palestine as a meeting place for all religions. Dreams of Zion were dreams of safety and a better life, something Palestine never held out, hence why there were so few Jews in Palestine compared to Arabs as early Zionists like Leo Motzkin freely admitted.

Zionism was the most recent of colonial movements and it borrowed from the past to plunder the future.

"Completely accurate statistics about the number of inhabitants do not presently exist. One must admit that the density of the population does not give the visitor much cause for cheer. In whole stretches throughout the land one constantly comes across large Arab villages, and it is an established fact that the most fertile areas of our country are occupied by Arabs..." (Protocol of the Second Zionist Congress, Pg. 103)." Leo Motzkin see also Ahad Ha'am.

Yes Zionism pretended the land was empty just as the Afrikaaners did with Southern Africa. Colonialists think alike and as in Australia consider the land they conquered empty ('terra nullis' was the term they used).

Much of your nonsense comes from Joan Peter's 'from time immemorial' - a forgery that cited a 14th century philosopher on Palestine in the 19th century. It has been comprehensively debunked but that still doesn't prevent Zionist myth makers returning like dogs to their vomit.

As Leo Motzkin observed, there were whole stretches of Arab villages, 400 of which the Zionists razed to the ground. Facts are difficult to overcome hence the need for myth.

"This idea of the relationship between a 'people' and land is reminiscent of blut and boden, blood and soil, the basics of Nazi racial ideology and it is as superficial and wrong now as then."----------

1. The Zionism appeared long before Nazism.2. Zionists usually weren't racists. The majority of them hoped peacefully and amicably to live with Arabs in future state. Arabs preferred to kill Jews.3. There are no proofs of a little appreciable origin of the Palestinian Arabs from Jews. For example, at them it is not found specifically Jewish (including, "of cohens") types of Y-chromosome J(at Jews more than 50 or 60 % of men have such origin.) But the Jewish origin even the majority ashkenazis is visible on our appearance and on genes ;)There is more. You say that the Palestinian Arabs allegedly occur from Jews. But after all they don't recognize it, and hate their Jewish "tribespeople", and don't recognize our rights. THEN why we should recognize their rights? ;(

Return of Jews to the Country of Israel, "Alija", occurred all the time before emergence of Zionism(and before the Arab occupation of the Country ;) ) That the majority of Jews preferred to go to other countries, doesn't cancel our rights to the Country. Arabs, grasping "Palestine" in a VII century, well knew this Jewish claim, but ignored it.

There is more. Why you don't consider as "imperialism" Country capture by Arabs ;-), but think, what we, the Jews owning this earth much earlier than Arabs, have no rights to it?

There is more. Arabs many centuries treated very badly the Jews living in the Arab countries. Discrimination, humiliations, riots, exiles, violent islamisation :-((( Now Israel treats the Arabs living under its power, is much softer (not including protection against the Arab terror. If the Palestinian Jews in the 7th century tried to arrange such terror against the Arab invaders, Arabs would exterminate them.) The Palestinian Arabs should thank every day God for this UNDESERVED condescension of Jews, and they dream of destruction of Israel and a new Holocaust.That these prosecutions and riots proceeded even in a century. You forgot disorder ("Farhud") in Iraq in June 1941; riots in Libya and Egypt in 1945 (that is long before emergence of Israel) though local Jews didn't encroach at all on the Arab power. As it is told in the Talmud "the one who is merciful to the cruel - it is cruel to merciful" :(

From the beginning of the Arab revolt in the Country of Israel in April, in Iraq 1936 attacks on Jews and acts of terrorism began. On the eve of Groves and - Shang 1936 in the face of all two Jews leaving the Jewish club were killed by shots. On Groves and - Shang this year «Day of Palestine» was appointed, and there were two more attacks on the Jews, one was killed, another is crippled. On Yom Kipur the bomb was thrown into the overflowed synagogue, but, fortunately, didn't blow up. In October the grenade was thrown into the Jewish club, one person was killed. The patience of the Jewish community burst: the Jewish strike was appointed to October 18, 1936: all shops belonging to Jews were closed, children didn't send to schools. 11 days later after a strike in Iraq there was the next revolution; the new authorities promised to the management of the Baghdad community that will put things in order, but demanded, that leading Jewish figures published the statement in which they would declare themselves loyal citizens of the homeland and kept separate from Zionism. Despite promises, acts of terrorism proceeded and further. More all them was during war with Great Britain when in a month there were 13 cases of murder of Jews.

About that, "as Zionists didn't rescue Jews" I will try to write tomorrow. While only I notice:You referred on certain "Shabtai Beit Zvi".1. There is no such Jewish surname of "Beit Zvi". In general, the word "Beyt" ("house" in the design interfaced to another word) (almost) is never used in the Jewish surnames.2. Shabtai (Sabbatay) Zvi - known Jewish pseudo-Messiah of the 17th century, passed then to Islam, the founder of heretical sect, outcast other Jews. Hardly any Israelian Jew would take itself these a name and a surname ;-) But they are known to many non Jews, but is worse, than "who is he was".

That is, founders of your anti-Zionist forgery couldn't give it to invented "author" a normal name and surname, and committed in them 2 gross blunders! :))

Yes but Nazism didn't appear out of nowhere. Heinrich Class's Pan German League had 100,000 members

2. Zionists usually weren't racists. The majority of them hoped peacefully and amicably to live with Arabs in future state. Arabs preferred to kill Jews.

I suppose statements like that of Pinhas Rosenbluth, Israel’s Minister of Justice that Palestine as "an institute for the fumigation of Jewish vermin." ‘ Joachim Doron ‘Classic Zionism and Modern Anti-Semitism: Parallels and Influences (1883-1914), Studies in Zionism, No. 8 Autumn 1983 isn't racist?

Or the statement that 'if we do not admit the rightfulness of anti-Semitism we deny the rightfulness of our own nationalism... Instead of establishing societies for defence against the anti-Semites who want to reduce our rights, we should establish societies for defence against our friends, who desire to defend our rights.'

And the Nazi ideologists in turn returned the complements. Heinrich Class who on Hitler’s elevation to power was made an honorary member of the Reichstag, wrote:Those who regard the Jews as a foreign race, which despite its participation in all the products of our culture did not become German... must honour the fact that among the Jews themselves the nationalist movement called Zionism is gaining more and more adherents. One must take one’s hat off to the Zionists, they admit - openly and honestly- that their people are a folk of its own kind whose basic characteristics are immutable.. They also declare openly that a true assimilation of the Jewish aliens to the host nations would be impossible according to the natural laws of race... THE ZIONISTS CONFIRM WHAT THE ENEMIES OF THE JEWS, THE ADHERENTS OF THE RACIAL THEORY HAVE ALWAYS ASSERTED... German and Jewish nationalists are of one opinion in regard to the indestructibility of the Jewish race

Or the visit by Arthur Ruppin to Prof. Hans Gunther, Himmler's chief ideological mentor, in 1933 at Jenna University to have a friendly chat about their shared racial obsessions. Ruppin was known as the father of land settlement in Palestine. I could quote Alfred Rosenberg, the Nazi Party's chief ideologue, in his citing and praise of the Zionists but I will leave you to look it up in Francis Nicosia's book on Anti-Semitism - he is a Zionist incidentally.

3. There are no proofs of a little appreciable origin of the Palestinian Arabs from Jews. For example, at them it is not found specifically Jewish (including, "of cohens") types of Y-chromosome J(at Jews more than 50 or 60 % of men have such origin.) But the Jewish origin even the majority ashkenazis is visible on our appearance and on genes ;)

There u go. Biological racism and all of it nonsense.

'There is more.'

I don't doubt it. Palestinians don't love Zionist settlers but never had problems with living with Jews as individuals.

Return of Jews to the Country of Israel, "Alija", occurred all the time before emergence of Zionism(and before the Arab occupation of the Country ;) )

No the Palestinians lived their, they didn't 'occupy' it. You come up with the same hoary myths that the Afrikaaners did or the Australians about 'terra nullis'

Well if the majority of Jews preferred to go anywhere but Palestine and if the 'old Yishuv' i.e. the Jews who were living there were opposed to Zionism, as Chaim Weizmann freely admitted, then that should tell you something.

That the majority of Jews preferred to go to other countries, doesn't cancel our rights to the Country. Arabs, grasping "Palestine" in a VII century, well knew this Jewish claim, but ignored it.

I don't doubt there's more hasbarah but you display your ignorance everytime you open your mouth, so why bother?

Why you don't consider as "imperialism" Country capture by Arabs ;-), but think, what we, the Jews owning this earth much earlier than Arabs, have no rights to it?

Because the indigenous people of Palestine consquered nothing. They were living there, just as the Africans lived in Africa. Just because European settlers came with biblical myths along with the rifle, doesn't make them imperialists.

'There is more.'

You said that already. But none of it is very impressive I'm afraid.

Arabs many centuries treated very badly the Jews living in the Arab countries. Discrimination, humiliations, riots, exiles, violent islamisation :-((( Now Israel treats the Arabs living under its power, is much softer (not including protection against the Arab terror. If the Palestinian Jews in the 7th century tried to arrange such terror against the Arab invaders, Arabs would exterminate them.) The Palestinian Arabs should thank every day God for this UNDESERVED condescension of Jews, and they dream of destruction of Israel and a new Holocaust.

More fantasies I'm afraid. Presumably that's why the Spanish Jews who escaped the Inquisition went to Egypt and Morocco. I pr esume even u have heard of Maimonedes?

That these prosecutions and riots proceeded even in a century. You forgot disorder ("Farhud") in Iraq in June 1941; riots in Libya and Egypt in 1945 (that is long before emergence of Israel) though local Jews didn't encroach at all on the Arab power.

In fact 1941 and 1945 is not very far off from 1948. Since Zionism had been established since the beginning of the century your own argument falls down (again).

As it is told in the Talmud "the one who is merciful to the cruel - it is cruel to merciful"

Which just goes to show what rubbish the Talmud mainly consists of. It also talks of boiling Jesus in excrement.

In the Farhud about 180 Jews died. How many died in the holocaust? 1% of Jews died under fascist/Nazi occupation of North Africa compared to about 60-70% on average in Europe.

From the beginning of the Arab revolt in the Country of Israel

It was called Palestine

in April, in Iraq 1936 attacks on Jews and acts of terrorism began.

Yes the revolt of a colonial people is usually called terrorism, unlike the blowing up of the King David Hotel or the bombing by the Irgun of Haifa market in 1938.

I won't bother with any more of your gibberish. Go and bother someone else with your ill-informed nonsense. I can appreciate a well informed Zionist to debate with but you are just an ignoramus